A Virtual Preemption Paradigm for Using Priority Rules to Solve Job Shop Scheduling Problems

To solve job shop scheduling problems, the priority rule is one of the most popular approach. It has the appeal because of simplicity, efficiency and effectiveness. However, the paradigm conventionally used to apply priority rules has a certain flaw. In this paper, we first point out this flaw and then propose a paradigm to remove it. A rule is also developed to exploit the potential of the new paradigm. The performance of the proposed approach is verified by several simulation experiments. The experimental results are quite satisfactory.